The Last Words of Rowan du Preez: Murder and Conspiracy on the Cape Flats

The Last Words of Rowan du Preez: Murder and Conspiracy on the Cape Flats

Simone Haysom

ISBN 9781868428687

In 2012 Angy Peter was bringing up her young children with her husband, Isaac Mbadu, in Bardale, Mfuleni, on the Cape Flats. Angy and Isaac were activists, leading the charge for a commission of inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha. Angy was vocally against vigilante violence and a go-to-person when demanding better services from the police.

But when the commission started its hearings Angy found herself instead on trial for murdering – necklacing – a young neighbourhood troublemaker, Rowan du Preez. The State’s case would centre on the accusation Rowan du Preez allegedly made with his dying breath – that Angy and her husband Isaac set the tyre alight around his neck.

Simone Haysom takes us into the heart of a mystery: was Angy Peter framed by the police for a murder she did not commit? Or was she, as the State argued, ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’, who won a young man’s trust then turned against him, in the most brutal way?

Simone Haysom spent four years meticulously researching this case and the result is a court-room drama interwoven with expert opinion and research into crime and the state of policing in the townships of South Africa.

The Author

Simone Haysom’s writing, both investigative and creative, has been widely published, including in The Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and Africa in Fact. She works as an independent researcher consulting to think-tanks, universities and NGOs. Simone Haysom has an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, which she attended as a Gates Scholar.

Extras

Reviews, News & Interviews:

A South African version of In Cold Blood, done with great integrity. It read like a thriller. John Maytham